Journal of X

Setting: NY Public library

A map lies below this glass. A map of original land, the first place ever. Representing what people once believe existed somewhere. And I’m here because my friend told me to see it. Said it’d leave me dumbfounded. I see it now. Its round shape defined by everything outside it. It’s hemmed in by a swirling darkness. My eyes read off the names someone had given to its features and my mind travels back.

As I stare, my eyes lose focus. As the map fades, I notice the reflection of my face. The lines and shapes blur, shedding themselves like an extra skin. I remember Ashbridge and that day. Down by the stream, on the other side of the rusting, iron fence.

ASHBRIDGE:

I was eight, playing in the early morning glow, I’d followed our dog Shannon, a golden retriever, down to the creek near our house. Holding onto her tail, we wandered farther into Ashbridge. We walked down the back road, then threaded our way through the rusting bars of the fence. Once a convent garden. When the convent closed, the garden grew wild. Only its shell/skeleton remained. A circle with three statues. Colossal and colorless as whale bones. Joseph at nine o’clock, Jesus at three and Mary at twelve, set back in a small shrine. An empty rectangular pool lay before Mary. In garden’s center lay a smaller circle of stone, once a flowerbed. Meadow grass grew waist high there. Joseph’s legs had become swamped by thick bushes. Ivy and morning glories climbed the walls surrounding Mary and into her pool. Rhododrendron bushes grew thick and dark green behind Jesus. Jesus’ stone heart stood out on his stone chest..

Many things happened to me at Ash-bridge. That day, I pretended to be a King who’d given away his Kingdom like an elephant in the forest. (I wandered looking for adventures to go on and discoveries to make.) With great attention, I examined each statue. Poking my fingers into the stone folds of their clothing, listening to their mute mouths tell me of imaginary miracles, learning secret spells to stop time or bring rain. The oak tree branches overhead had grown together, scattering the rays of the sun into soft waves of light like the bottom of a streambed. Sitting on the grass as a broken king, Jesus asked me to go on a quest. A quest to battle dragons, giants, and thunderstorms. To discover flaming swords and secret seas. While listening at his side, the Virgin Mary called to me in the voice of a dove. I walked toward her, until I’d reached the steps of the pool. There in its mossy bottom, I discovered the monster.
ASHBRIDGE>The Snakebite

It lay asleep. Without making a sound, I came down the steps and took a deep breath. So close now, I could reach out and touch its scales. I cautiously observed the beast. Most of its skin had peeled off and lay beside it, a ghostly twin. Shannon barked and it awoke. No ears, no hair, no arms or legs. A three-foot long, living belt coiled and ready. A yellow stripe blazed down the length of its back. In a swift motion, I tried to grab it just below its head. It moved first, beating me, striking my left hand between my thumb and index finger. Two needle-like teeth sinking into my skin. In shock, I didn’t scream. Blood spilled forth. A thick, wet, red rope unwinding from my hand. I lifted the serpent up to look at it. I tried to pry its teeth from me but couldn’t.
HOUSE/PORCH: reaching home + finding tank

Dazed and unsure what to do, I walked back to my house. The snake swayed on my hand and dragged on the ground as I walked. Yet it wouldn’t let go. Shannon followed with her yellow tail wagging. When I reached my mother in our kitchen, she screamed and dropped a glass she’d been cleaning. With pride, I raised my arm up higher, lifting it completely off the floor. Realizing it needed something to be put in, I made my way to the back of our house. My brother Matt kept empty tanks beneath the back porch. The snake held on like a hideous sixth finger while I crawled underneath the porch. Locating a tank without much trouble, I dragged it into the sunlight.

HOUSE/PORCH: pulling snake off me

The sun watched from her seat in the middle of the sky, as I stuck the index and middle fingers of my right hand beneath the snake’s upper jaw. I slowly pulled its teeth out of my flesh. More blood shot from my hand as they came out. Gently, I dropped it in the tank and immediately covered the top with a screen and a big, flat rock. Once inside, it thrashed about wildly.

HOUSE/PORCH: mom wrapping wound

My brothers came out onto the back porch to watch. Blood continued gushing from my hand. My mother took me inside. She held my hand above my head and into our kitchen sink. I watched with my eyes glued to the two holes, fascinated that my arm held so much blood. The holes weren’t circular but slightly flat, like two sleepy eyes. She wrapped my hand with dark pink gauze. I went outside to watch the snake. Sitting cross-legged, with my face in my hands, I intently watched the animal whip itself against the tank’s glass walls.

HOUSE/PORCH: lampshade conversation

My brother Derry sat down next to me, “Are you scared?” He asked softly. “Why?” I asked. He looked over his shoulder briefly to see if our mom had come outside or was still in the kitchen. Then he laughed. “Because, this is a water moccasin! A cottonmouth! A pit viper! You’ve got poison in your veins!” My eyes widen in fear. Turning, I saw his serious expression, his eyes wide and mouth turned down. “Right now the poison has attached itself to your heart like thousands of tiny leeches. It will start feeding on your little blood pump, and in no time flat. You’re as dead as a doornail..….Do you remember what I told you the devil does?” I nodded slowly, recalling the day, when we’d sat by the window in the front room.

>>>FLASHBACK: ROOM/HOUSE/PORCH: lampshade conversation

That day he had delicately touched the white lampshade by the door. Softly and slowly he had told me that if you’re bad in this life, when you die, you’ll go to hell. I asked him what happened if you were good. He told me you’ll go to heaven, to paradise, to Eden. You can do whatever you want in heaven, he’d said. I thought about that, while looking out the window at the blue sky. I smiled. Then I started wondering though. What do you do in hell? Derry hadn’t said anything for a minute, then he’d told me. You either burn in a lake of fire or you’re turned into a lampshade. With that he’d pulled the cord attached to the lamp and the light bulb turned on. For only an instant, I saw the blinding light shining through the pale white lampshade. In that next instant, I felt simultaneously both the light’s warmth on my eyelids and in my mind as I imagined what the lampshade felt as it became illuminated.

HOUSE/PORCH: lampshade conversation

“Yep, you’re a goner for sure. Mom didn’t want to tell you because there’s nothing you can do. It won’t be long. I hope you’ve been good or you’ll be a lampshade in no time.” I begged my brother, “What can I do? Please, tell me!” He looked over his shoulder once more, then deep into my eyeballs. “Pray to God to stay alive, the Virgin Mary too. Just like Grandpa taught you. Tell them everything that’s every happened to you and thank ‘em for it. Should also probably go somewhere they can hear you. I think that might protect you. It might be too late already though.” I took off running.

ASHBRIDGE: PRAYING

Descending the seven steps into the empty pool, I knelt and clasp my hands together, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” Please God, I don’t wanna die. Thank you for everything. Thank you for…”

I prayed and prayed in that empty baptismal pool. The memory of that light shining through the lampshade drove my words onward. (What we can see, we ca understand) It blinded me, terrified and excited me. Telling everything that had ever happened in my young life. The sun climbed high into the sky, and the day grew hot. Inside the pool, sounds echoed and became amplified. I pictured what the pool must have looked like when it had water. My voice went out and back to me, as though it were someone else’s. Cicadas whirred like some terrible machine eating the air. I thought about lakes of fire and human lampshades. In my mind, I could see the poison washing thru my bloodstream like the oil spill I’d seen on Tv.

ASHBRIDGE: CONVERSATION WITH MOM.

After I don’t know how long, I heard Shannon panting. “What are you doing down there?” I stopped praying and turned around to respond. “Derry told me as long as I kept praying I wasn’t gonna die. I’d be ok. I wasn’t going to go to hell and become a lampshade.” My mother stood on the top step, her hands firmly planted on her waist. She smiled down at me. “Your brother is lying. You aren’t going to die. The snake’s not poisonous.” Looking up at her, with my hands still firmly together, I asked. “How do you know for sure?” She rolled her eyes. “Because, I’m your mother and I know these things. You shouldn’t believe anything your brother tells you, unless you check it with me.” My hands fell to my sides and I stood up.

“What about heaven and hell?” I asked timidly. “What about them?” She replied. “Are they real?” She sat down. “Come here.” I did as she asked. Once I was sitting down between her and Shannon, she pointed at my bandaged hand. “What do you have there? Let me see it.” I looked down and saw that I’d been clutching part of the snakeskin. Astonished, I wordlessly gave it to her. She held it delicately, running her fingertips along its surface as if she were tenderly reading over a message written in brail. After a minute, she spoke again. “Heaven and Hell are real. But they aren’t outside you. They’re your mind. And you know what? Your mind is its own place.” I dug my fingers into Shannon’s long golden fur and leaned my cheek against her side. What she said didn’t make that much sense to me. But I knew I wasn’t gonna die, so I leaned against Shannon and gave a half-smile. My mother spoke again. “Look at me. Look in my eyes.” Her eyes were blue sunflowers in the fading light. They focused directly on me, then glanced down at the snake skin. She asked me. “You still scared about becoming a human lampshade?” I thought for a moment and nodded yes. “Well then, there’s only one cure. What’s your Archimedean screw?”

“My arch-E- meat what?”

“The thing that you love best of all?” She paused, considering it for a moment, she said. “Is it basketball, like Derry?”

“No”

“Is it drawing like Matt?”

I shook my head. How could I answer her, I didn’t think I liked just one thing. I kinda liked a lot of things. I couldn’t think of just one. And then, it came to me. “I like to play, to imagine stuff and then tell myself stories about it…..because the stories feel real.” She smiled. “Good. Remember that always and it will save you from any poison every time.”

HOUSE: DISOCVERY OF SNAKESKIN

Later - just before the sun set in the sky, my father and I went out back to uncover the tank. Looking inside, all we found was shed skin. It had gone. The screen top didn’t seem to have moved, yet the snake had vanished. Only its dead skin remained. I reached in and pulled the transparent shedding.. How could I explain that skin. Imagine a silk and papyrus scroll with a pattern sweeping across it like some wind blown idea. A piece of music written in an extraterrestrial tongue. Specific and completely elusive like an imprint of someone’s face in wet sand. Its shed bellyskin felt smooth and fragile as the outer layers of an onion, (broken every few inches by ribbing.) Down either side of its spine, small scales were set in well ordered rows, like streams of red blood cells. And lastly along its spine ran that smooth line, like a river.

In the library, I trace the course of the river on the map. Running my hand over the glass until it settles on the display label, read it to myself. I can’t help but smile and I think of the snake’s skin beneath my mother’s words. For maps, skin and shadows all tell flat stories of curved things. As I look further, something begins to dawn in me. It’s beautiful to see through something else and into yourself. In the center of the map’s darkness is the island where life began. A splash of pale green. On it there is the river and many names. And across everything is one word: Eden. (As I stare into it with only joy in my heart, I glimpse the light through the lampshade.)